Classical rhetoric defines ethos as the skilled presentation of an author’s character. However, there are differences between establishing character in the conventional rules for print and in the unsettled ones for online discourse. This website, a rich and robust site for rhetorical analysis and production, helps students and faculty to understand and implement aspects of character presentation in a specific social situation of web 2.0: the selfie (a self-taken picture portraying a person). The website answers a specific question: how can we detect and practice social media ethos through the selfie? Selfies have become an integral part of our daily lives: our friends post selfies on social media, we take selfies at parties and on vacation, and we use them to connect with family. Though they might seem inconsequential, selfies are rhetorically rich sites of character presentation in the world of social media, and a study about their composition offers an unrealized pedagogical potential, especially in the writing classroom. Selfies record the experience of a moment; they share a feeling, rather than an event.

 

The purpose of this website is to serve as a resource for faculty in writing-intensive courses who want to incorporate selfies into their teaching of visual and argumentative rhetoric. It offers exercises, assignments, and models to help students practice the rhetorical concept of ethos and apply it to popular trends and everyday life. The goal is to establish a virtual space that presents strategies to use selfies as tools that offer faculty and students a novel way to enhance understanding of character presentation in social media. Instructors can use selfies to help students understand metaphorical relations between theoretical information on character presentation they acquire in their writing classes and possible strategic presentation of their own character. For example, selfies might provide a way to practice visual composition. As a consequence, students effectively practice rhetorical thinking about ethos and accurately present their character in the social media world.

 

Self(ie) Awareness brings into play the pedagogical potential of the selfie. The website makes available a qualitative study of how the practice of the selfie relates to character presentation in social media. Because of their intrinsic aim of presenting people in everyday situations, selfies can have pedagogical purposes that range from practicing argumentation, to showing understanding of and identification with a specific community, to presenting oneself in a targeted way. The website assists viewers in identifying patterns and trends within presentation practices, and it improves the availability of digital resources to foster student learning.

 

We offer 4 rhetorical categories that can be used to systematize the production and reading of selfies:

 

• Good character

• Persuasion

• Identification

• Discursive formation

 

These four categories are based on the traditional kinds of rhetorical discourse. Good character establishes traits of epideictic rhetoric, whose aim is to celebrate the present, praising the subject of the selfie for her good nature; persuasion denotes a selfie that engages in deliberative rhetoric, whose aim is to change the future, convincing the audience of one of the subject’s positive traits; identification sets up practices in forensic rhetoric, whose aim is to understand the past, creating a connection between the subject and a specific discourse community. Finally, discursive formation links directly with visual rhetoric.

 

As it is the case in classical rhetoric, each discursive attempt includes aspects of all these kinds. Something that is mostly persuasive can include epideictic and forensic aspects as well. These discourses do not happen in a vacuum. This is true for selfie composition as well. A selfie can be situated as part of a specific rhetorical discourse, but it is highly possible that audiences could see aspects of different rhetorical discourses in that same selfie.

 

The website offers multiple examples of how these rhetorical categories work, with write-to-learn exercises about the theory behind the categories and classroom practices that target those categories. In the system we developed, the good character category can be noticed when the subject of the selfie wants to convince the audience that he or she is a good person: for example, the subject shows him/herself with friends, or smiling, and so on. The persuasion category is used when the subject of the selfie wants to convince the audience of a specific character trait through some action: for example, the subject wants the audience to believe that traveling is a positive experience, or that doing charity work is a fulfilling activity, and so on. The identification category can be noticed when the subject wants some members of the audience to identify with him or her: for example, the subject might wear some school garments, or he/she might be shown with a specific brand, so that the audience can feel a connection with a lived experience. The discursive formation category shows the person not as the center of attention in the selfie; rather, an object catches the audience’s primary attention. However, that object says something about the person’s character: for example, when the focal point of the selfie is a book, that book tells us something about the character of the selfie’s taker, who chose to show him/herself with that specific book.

 

The ability to present one’s character effectively in different media is an essential aspect of writing practice, and this website is a resource that can help students to sharpen their understanding of web 2.0. Here, teachers and students can access a systematic description of the purposes of selfies that facilitates innovations in teaching visual rhetoric and writing approaches. The objective of Self(ie) Awareness is to enable interested teachers to implement the website in their own writing classes. These four categories offer a sophisticated way of learning composition, and they help students to practice analogous thinking between the rhetorical concept of ethos and its connection with everyday life.